ABSTRACT
The vast majority of people who have been diagnosed as mentally ill have done everything possible to hide this fact from others. Legal remedies designed to prevent discrimination against people with disabilities have been of little use to those with psychiatric conditions. Applications for jobs, visas, training programs, even brief retreats at meditation centers still ask about prior mental illness. For people in high-profile professions, the risk of revealing a psychiatric diagnosis varies, depending on the exact nature of their work. Mike Wallace and Jane Pauley, both prominent TV journalists, were courageous to acknowledge their respective diagnoses of major depression and bipolar disorder. They might have been seen as being incapable of the "objectivity" and on-camera cheerfulness required in their jobs. People like this are not exactly "hidden in plain sight", like Jews in 1940s Europe or gay people in much of the world today. But the stigma of mental illness extends far beyond people like this who act strangely.
